Sunday, April 9, 2017

English, Indigenous Language Instruction, and National Development

There are two persistent fallacies concerning the
nexus between language of instruction at schools and national development. The
first fallacy states that no society has ever developed using a foreign
language. The second fallacy flows from the first, and it states that
indigenous language instruction in and of itself guarantees national
development. I will explode both fallacies in today’s column.

Broadly speaking, two groups of people are invested in,
and help popularize, these fallacies. The first group is made up of people I
choose to characterize as “English mumpsimuses.” Mumpsimus is defined as “adherence
to or persistence in an erroneous use of language, memorization, practice,
belief, etc., out of habit or obstinacy (opposed to sumpsimus).” A person who
is wedded to, or who persists in, mumpsimus is also called a mumpsimus. (The
term mumpsimus came to mean stubborn resistance to correction because an old
monk in the 16th century mispronounced the Latin word “sumpsimus” as
“mumpsimus” but intentionally persisted in his error even after he was
corrected.)

So an English mumpsimus is a person who commits errors
in English but is either unwilling or unable to accept corrections. English
mumsimuses not only choose to persist in their errors but also direct their
anger at the language and at people who point out their errors. This group has
my sympathy because English does have quirky and whimsical conventions of usage
that can throw off even the most careful learner.

The second group of people is a motley crowd of feel-good,
starry-eyed, sentimental nationalists who resent the global linguistic hegemony
of English—for good reason. But their arguments against the use of English as a
language of instruction at schools are often injected with heavy doses of
emotive appeals, but they stand on a slender thread of empirical evidence.

As an advocate for African languages myself, I share
some of their sentimental reasons for promoting the use of indigenous languages
for instruction at all levels of education. But sentiments are no substitutes
for evidence-based reasoning, and legitimate emotions don’t become facts by
virtue of their legitimacy. So let’s look at the evidence.

Nations
that developed using foreign languages

It’s a well-worn cliché among dewy-eyed linguistic nationalists
that indigenous language instruction is the only key to national development.
There are several iterations of this sentiment.

For instance, in a 2016 edited book
titled Studies in Nigerian Linguistics,
Philip Anagbogu and Gideon Omachonu contributed a chapter in which they claim
that, “No nation has ever made appreciable progress in development as well as
science and technology education relying on a foreign language(s).”

One Professor Birgit Brock-Utne, a Norwegian who
taught and lived in Tanzania for a long time, also claimed that,"No country has ever developed on the
basis of a foreign language." But these essentialist claims have no basis
in linguistic or historical evidence.

Evidence from
linguistic research (and, I might add, common sense) shows that no one is infrangibly
wired to cogitate rarefied thoughts only in their native language. Societies
don't develop because they use their primordial languages for education, nor do
they stagnate because they deploy a foreign language for education. That’s
vulgar linguistic determinism. Development isn't solely a function of language
of instruction at schools; it's a consequence of a multiplicity of factors.

There are 6,909 living languages in the world. The linguistic
deterministic thesis of development that holds that societies can only develop
if they use their indigenous languages for instruction at schools would suggest
that speakers of all the 6,909 living languages in the world should have their
separate instructional policies based on their languages. What a babel that
would be!

History is littered with examples of countries that developed
on the basis of a foreign language.

Let’s start with Europe. Scholarship in Latin, that
is, Classical Latin, is the foundation of the development of Western Europe.
Latin wasn't native to vast swathes of people in Europe. It was an exclusive
elite language, a reason all other European languages at the time were called “vernacular
languages.” Latin was the language of education in Europe (including in North
Africa where it was studied in schools until the Roman Empire waned) until
about the second half of the 18th century.

European development
wasn't stalled because people learned and used Latin for scholarship; on the
contrary, scholarship in Latin is the foundation for Western Europe’s
development. It isn't because there is something intrinsically superior or
magical about Latin; it's simply because, for historical reasons, it was the vault
of knowledge at the time—the way English is today.

In the Muslim world, particularly from the 8th century
to the 13th century, during the so-called Golden Age of Islam when science,
mathematics, astronomy, medicine, economic development, etc. grew and flowered
luxuriantly, the language of scholarship was Arabic, but several of the key
personages associated with this golden age spoke Arabic as a second language.

For example, Muhammad Ibn Musa al-Kwarizmi, the father
of algorithm, spoke Farsi as his first language, but his language of education
was Arabic. That didn't stop him from making profound contributions to
knowledge and to development. Note that Farsi (Persian) and Arabic are not only
mutually unintelligible languages, they also belong to two different language
families. Persian is an Indo-European language (in common with English!) while
Arabic is an Afro-Asiatic language (in common with Hausa!)

Ibn Sina, through whose efforts the West recovered
Aristotle and whose work in medical science is foundational, was also a Persian
who learned and wrote in Arabic. Arabic was a second language to him. I can go
on, but the point I want to make is that several of the central figures in
Islam's golden age weren't native Arabic speakers. In fact, most people in the
Muslim Ummah at the time weren’t Arabs. But Arabic was the language of
education. It was the epistemic storehouse of the time, and the fact of Arabic’s
foreignness didn't cause it to halt the development of the societies in which
it was used.

For modern examples of countries that developed using
a foreign language, Singapore is one. Although most Singaporeans are ethnically
Chinese, they use English as the language of instruction at all levels of
education in their country. Singapore, not long ago, transitionedfrom
“third world to first,” to borrow from the title of late Singaporean Prime
Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s book. Use of English as the language of education hasn’t
stalled Singapore’s development.

Ireland is another example. For long, it was Europe’s
fastest growing economy because of its advances in information and
communication technology. Ireland’s language of instruction at all levels of
education is English even though English isn’t “native” to the country. The
country’s “native” tongue is Gaelic, which is mutually unintelligible with
English. Like Nigeria and Singapore, Ireland was colonized by England.

In addition, several universities in Asia and Europe
are now switching to English as their language of instruction. They aren't
stupid.

On the other hand, North Koreans, Vietnamese,
Pakistanis, Mongolians, etc., use their native languages as their countries'
official languages and as the languages of instruction at all levels of
education. That hasn't guaranteed their development. So it is simplistic to
assert that simply being educated in a native language is all that is needed to
be developed, and that use of a foreign language forecloses development.

As I pointed out earlier, although evidence suggests
that mother-tongue instruction enhances learning, no human being is
intrinsically and inexorably wired to conceptualize high-minded thoughts in
just one language, or only in the language of the culture they grew up in.
Nigeria isn't stuck in prolonged infancy because English is its official
language; it is because it has had no purposeful, forward-looking,
transaction-oriented leadership since independence.

I will explore this topic some more next week and conclude
with a discussion on India, which shares many similarities with Nigeria.

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About Me

Dr. Farooq Kperogi is a professor, journalist, newspaper columnist, author, and blogger based in Greater Atlanta, USA. He received his Ph.D. in communication from Georgia State University's Department of Communication where he taught journalism for 5 years and won the top Ph.D. student prize called the "Outstanding Academic Achievement in Graduate Studies Award." He earned his Master of Science degree in communication (with a minor in English) from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and won the Outstanding Master's Student in Communication Award.

He earned his B.A. in Mass Communication (with minors in English and Political Science) from Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria, where he won the Nigerian Television Authority Prize for the Best Graduating Student.

Dr. Kperogi worked as a reporter and news editor, as a researcher/speech writer at the (Nigerian) President's office, and as a journalism lecturer at Kaduna Polytechnic and Ahmadu Bello University before relocating to the United States.

He was the Managing Editor of the Atlanta Review of Journalism History, a refereed academic journal. He was also Associate Director of Research at Georgia State University's Center for International Media Education (CIME).

He is currently an Associate Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at the School of Communication and Media, Kennesaw State University, Georgia's fastest-growing and third largest university. (Kennesaw is a suburb of Atlanta). He also writes two weekly newspaper columns: "Notes From Atlanta" in the Abuja-based DailyTrust on Saturday (formerly Weekly Trust) and "Politics of Grammar" in the DailyTrust on Sunday (formerly Sunday Trust).

In April 2014 Dr. Kperogi was honored as the Outstanding Alumnus of the University of Louisiana's Department of Communication. His research has also won international awards, such as the 2016 Top-Rated Research Paper Award at the 17th Symposium on Online Journalism at the University of Texas, Austin, USA.